On the Genealogy of Morality

chains.” (Rousseau, 1) The freedom of the individual is curtailed by socially imposed moral boundaries. Morality has become a convenient camouflage for strangulating the desires and aspirations of the individuals who try to live life on their own terms. The rebels of the society are silenced by branding them immoral. In his book On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche traces the birth of morality to the herding together of the weak and proclaiming their opponents, the strong, as “bad” or “evil”,…

reference to religion, are truly just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning (Ethics, Faith, and Reason 7).” Does this effect that religion is the only way to explain morality? Friedrich Nietzsche would argue that morality itself wasn’t necessary. Merce Cardus said, “Envy is – Nietzsche recognised – an essential part of life. Yet the lingering effects of Christianity generally teaches to feel ashamed of our envious feelings. They…

Crime and Punishment was the book I enjoyed reading the most. Dostoevsky succeeded to create a real character in which I could mentally align myself with while reading the book; I felt the same emotions as the main character, Raskolnikov. Although Raskolnikov murdered Alyona Ivanonva early on in the book, the rest of the book kept my attention because of Raskolnikov’s punishment. In class, we discussed why Raskolnikov murdered the pawnbroker. There were several reasons thrown out and discussed;…

And Justice for All: How Do We Deal with Oppression? It may seem foolish and nonsensical to compare two texts coming from such wildly different contexts as Douglass’s and Shakespeare’s times. Values change along with the times, and a cross-examination of the two works can lead to nothing but “apple-to-orange” type claims. When taken separately, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” may seem completely unrelated to each other. But perspective…

In sharp contrast to the relatively impersonal nature of the Crimes Against Humanity course material, Tommy Dick’s Getting Out Alive depicts, with a bone-chilling clarity, the emotions spawned by genocide; the humiliation brought on by being publically classified as inferior, the anguish borne out of being persecuted for another’s gain and the eventual transcendence of emotion, barring the fear of death. Through the analyzation of Dick’s critically acclaimed memoir, it is revealed that, not only…

The study of the influence of society in individual’s health is not recent. To demonstrate the sociology utility, Durkheim (1897) examined the suicide rates in population and suggested that the strong social control among Catholics resulted in low rates of suicide. Nowadays, the data collected by Durkheim will not reflect the same reality. However, the mental health is likely to be related not only to genetics factor, but also to the social reality that the individual is inserted. The…

the city gives—riches, gambling, violence, and unhinged sexuality. The countryside is presented as idyllic, where people (specifically, black people) can live and enjoy the ‘simple’ pleasures in life, and most importantly sustain their Christian morality. This is exemplified by the presence of the black church, and its ubiquitous preacher, whom, for Little Joe, acts as a double for his guardian angel when he’s traversing through an alternate world during a coma. Blacks are only portrayed as…

The non-philosophical stimulus under examination is The Sandlot(1993), specifically the scene where one of the main characters, Smalls, decided to remove his stepfather's’ special baseball from his den. Smalls does this because his friends are in desperate need for a ball in order to continue their summer of fun. When searching for spare change in his house, he comes to the den and sees what looks to be a great opportunity to take. The heart of the movie relies on the moral aspect of one’s…

When grounded upon Raymond Williams’ concept of the dominant society and the perpetual flux between filtering residual and emergent cultures, the existence of the novel by such definitions are placed into that of the former. Novels represent a notion of residual culture that has been deeply absorbed within the current superstructure as “they contribute to the effective dominant culture and are a central articulation of it” (Williams 1434), while creating more production for the base through…

One reason that DNA testing attracted people’s attention is it is ability to uncover that ancestry information that individuals who have been disconnected from their ancestor’s homeland. For instance, during the period of slavery, European brought a large of number of slaves from various parts of Africa to the New World and those slaves have in America for generations. DNA examination brings hope for these African Americans because it can trace back their ancestry which helps African Americans…